As our lives have become less hectic and more home-based, people are searching for holiday-related topics earlier than ever before. Months earlier to be exact…Based on the recent data, many expect (us included) that this holiday season will be powered mainly by online shopping. So it’s not surprising that all social media platforms are gearing up for capitalizing on what will be a very busy few months online for retailers across the globe. We’ve looked at all of them to bring you a recap of the key shopping updates every marketer should know about.
New Business Suite
Facebook is trying to do its bit to help and boost the engagement for small/medium-sized businesses by launching a new app called ‘’Business suite’’. The app will allow businesses using different platforms like Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook to do all their marketing and business via this single app. The business owners just have to link the accounts to the business suite and all the activity and updates across all platforms can be managed from there. Activities like responding to messages, posts on Facebook and Instagram, access insights, and ad campaign performance are enabled. Facebook hopes that these updates will heighten customer engagement and help businesses build better relationships with their clients.
Image: Wersm
Facebook Payments
But what kind of a business suite would it be without a payment system in place? Facebook has taken up another project to streamline the payment process for both Facebook and Instagram. This will provide a straightforward shopping experience allowing the users to buy directly through adverts and on a post in the applications.
The new Account Center option that links Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger accounts will remove the need of reopening each app.
And there are quite a few choices users can pick from. You can decide how you would like to link up your accounts:
- If you want to cross-post your stories and updates across apps, Story & Post Sharing is for you
- Fancy to do some shopping through Facebook – Streamline your payments with Facebook Pay
- In a rush? No problem, now you can access Instagram through Facebook.
This feature will make the user experience more effortless when using different Facebook apps. But it’s not all a light-hearted attempt to better the experience on the platform. Facebook will obtain a better understanding of the usage of their apps. Furthermore, this new update is likely to encourage impulse purchases with additional shopping features coming to Facebook and Instagram fairly soon.
We can already paint the picture here. The company now controls the main social media networks, messaging channels, advertising platform, and now has added the shopping experience to its portfolio. Facebook is on its mission to become a key tool for both our professional and personal lives.
Instagram Shopping has been around for a while and creators have been able to tag products in their posts to encourage sales, but only now the app is adding the tab to the navigation bar.
Commerce Manager
Soon, businesses will be able to streamline the selling and shopping process on Instagram with new layouts and the preview of collections. Plus, all accounts with a shop can take the advantage of the new in-app checkout using the Commerce Manager or integrate Shopify or BigCommerce.
Image: Instagram
Typically there is a fee for using these capabilities, but due to the current economic climate, Instagram won’t apply the selling fees until next year. – A tip to the Instagram businesses, jump on it to get the most of the feature while it’s for free.
Live Shopping
But that’s not it, the app is also going to launch Live Shopping, which has been rather successful in China. This feature allows users to buy products that they are viewing on a live stream.
Image: Instagram
Another biggie from Insta is the closed caption feature to their IGTV videos. Often we don’t realize how effective captions are. It really makes the difference when it comes to clear communication and delivering the message to your customers.
Most of the time we view the videos on mute as we scroll through the feed, so chances are we won’t get the full concept without hearing the audio – captions solve this problem by allowing us to read it.
Pinterest, as it turns out, is growing faster than Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat with its 416 million active users. The platform has released its holiday marketing hub to help businesses maximize sales this holiday season.
Image: Pinterest
You know how Facebook has its Blueprint and Google has Analytics Academy, where the companies teach you how to use the platforms allowing you to advertise on their network – this is Pinterest’s way of teaching you how to use their marketing features wisely and effectively.
Pinterest produced a performance guide to reach ready to shop users on their platform. The guide incorporates several resources and tools, including case studies, previous research reports, and one really useful tool – Personas Research tool where marketers can discover six Pinterest user segments and the relevant keywords.
Image: Pinterest
More Ad Slots
Pinterest is really broadening its horizons when it comes to marketers this year. With a growing number of people turning to Pinterest for shopping ideas, the visual discovery engine is taking the opportunity to introduce more ad slots to businesses. This is important because it allows marketers to experiment with placements, and also reduces their costs as advertisers won’t be fighting over limited ad space.
Image: Pinterest
Insights
To further the marketing capabilities, Pinterest will provide the Pin marketers with more detailed insights on Specific Pin performance. It seems like the platform is on its way to establishing an advertising space similar to Facebook and Twitter where both organic and paid efforts will be measured. This will finally allow marketers to assess the effectiveness of their campaigns and overall marketing activity on Pinterest by using already commonly employed metrics on other social media platforms.
Image: Pinterest
To add to this, we will be seeing some personalized shopping recommendations letting Pinners find related products, while the brands will gain more exposure. The only bad news here is that these updates are only rolled out in the US and UK, to begin with. Overall, Pinterest has refocused on ecommerce and making the products more accessible and visible on the platform.
Pinterest is not the only one launching its holiday hub. Twitter joins the club too!
Although the list of new features and guides is not as extensive as for other social media platforms, the ‘microblogging’ system has published many blogs and shares resources with some tips and strategies in an attempt to guide you through this holiday season.
Image: Twitter
This year, everyone is trying to look forward to something, remembering the times spent with family and when everyone was together. The festive season is almost the definition of togetherness. Maybe this sentiment drives anticipation for the holiday season and people are getting ready earlier than the years before. This sentiment also provides a great opportunity for all marketers and businesses out there. Taking the advantage of the guides and new features released by the leading platforms will be a gamechanger this holiday season.
